A Phil/Comp-Sci Pseudokoan

Setting: An academy somewhere between ancient Athens and modern-day Singapore.

A young monk asks the Zen-master Roussos: “What is the best computer game ever?”

Roussos replies: “Manic Miner on the 48K ZX Spectrum.”

“Wonderful, my game-playing neural-network has long since mastered that game. Eugene has been toileted” said the monk.

The novice then continues: “What is the second-best computer game ever?”

Roussos replies: “Clearly Sonic 2 on the Megadrive. It even came out on Sonic Tuesday.”

“Fantastic, my GAN just stylistically blitzed through that too. And the third best?”

Roussos graciously replies: “Elite on the BBC Micro, or perhaps Populous on the Amiga.”

“Indeed, much trickier, but both recently Armageddoned and ELITED to beyond Thargol.”

So, the zen-master enquires: “Could your game-playing Turing-machine know the warped mind of Mathew Smith if I fed it his Z80 machine code?”

“Ah…” said the novice.

R. Jones, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Liverpool. Hsdjon12@liv.ac.uk